Burying the Past

by Judith Cutler

  ‘If you’re still imagining your nice china cup, of course you can’t. But all you have to do is take the plastic lid from a paper cup and you’re fine. And you don’t eat the half-chewed sarnie, you eat the one they’ve not touched. Come and see. No, you’re all right: I’ll shout you a fresh bite, not a second-hand one.’

  As they walked, he told her about his second incarnation: this time he’d actively sought promotion, he said, because he’d become bored and wanted a challenge. And he’d started to use the gym: all the cardiac cases around him had made him aware that he wore his belt below his belly, not around it. And – would she believe it? – he and his wife had taken up ballroom dancing. They were going on a ballroom-dancing cruise over Christmas.

  ‘With all due respect, Fran, isn’t it time you hung up your handcuffs? And not just on the bedhead, either – didn’t I hear you and the ACC were tying the knot at last? Good for you. Spend some time together while you can. You don’t want to be like Ian French – get your pension paperwork on Friday, drop dead Saturday. Yes, without a word of a lie. Grab the day – there’s some fancy phrase, but that’s what it means. Now, I always opt for salad on wholemeal . . .’

  As they sat, healthy food before them, she said, almost tentatively, ‘About retirement – I can’t make up my mind, Roy. The force – except we shouldn’t call it that! – has been my whole life, except when I went off to university.’

  ‘Do you still wake up in the morning wanting to go to work? Think you can make a difference? Yes? Well, you’re not ready yet. Besides, it’d be dead funny for you, both retiring at once.’

  She froze, sandwich halfway to her lips. ‘Is there something I should know?’ She hoped she sounded mocking. But if she wasn’t, was it something to do with Simon’s suicide or with Sammie’s media revelations? And, more to the point, why hadn’t Mark mentioned it? Then she remembered that the jungle drums sometimes added an extra beat, and she took a bite, trying to smile casually as she chewed.

  ‘Only what my mates down the pub are saying. That this new bloke, Sparrow or Starling or whatever, wants a clean sweep. No one over fifty in the senior echelons, and that’s for starters. People your level will be replaced by new, telly-friendly high-flyers. Only rumour, of course. But would the guv’nor mind?’

  She swallowed before she replied. ‘We’d all rather jump than wait to be pushed, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘And, of course,’ Roy continued, ‘it’d be really bad for morale if all the top brass nipped off at once. Over there,’ he continued, in exactly the same tone, ‘no, don’t turn, just swivel your eyes – over by the drinks machine. Is that her? She’s been grazing at a couple of tables.’

  Apparently preoccupied with the sandwich wrapper, she checked the girl. She was thin and waiflike enough, but too tall for Cynd. ‘No.’

  ‘OK, when we’ve finished, we’ll have a stroll through the waiting areas and the shop, but we’ve both got copper written all over us, so I doubt if we’ll have any luck. And then we check every single screen from every single camera at every single angle.’

  Mark glanced at his watch. He’d probably just got time, and if one of the four parking slots outside the Royal Mail depot was open he’d take it as an omen. He hadn’t picked up his mail – kept back by Royal Mail since they didn’t have a proper address yet – since he’d moved. He hadn’t felt the need, since most of his communication was electronic these days, and his financial transactions were done, as he’d told Dave, by direct debit or standing order. But as he drove hopefully along Sandling Road, someone pipped him to the post – and he found himself grinning broadly at his silly mental pun. All because he and Dave were on speaking terms again. Or was it for the first time? Whatever it was, his heart sang with joy that he hadn’t slung away what he thought was a broken bottle. Arthur Miller – that was the author he’d been trying to recall when he was talking to Fran the other night, and Death of a Salesman the A-level text. Was that what getting older meant? That things came back to you when you didn’t need them?

  Laughing no longer, he headed back to work.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Go ahead – it’s OK to use mobiles in here,’ Roy declared, plonking a mug of coffee in front of Fran.

  Glad to escape, if only for a few minutes, the confusion of images on the screens before her, she nodded, responding to the text.

  It was from Lina Townend. Eureka.

  End of message. So what on earth had the young woman found? And why the unnecessarily enigmatic message? She texted back a much blunter one: What?

  Back to the screens and the over-strong coffee. Roy seemed to be tracking someone, shifting the camera to get a better image.

  ‘No,’ he said at last, sighing. ‘It’s the lass we saw earlier. Here – you have a go. Sit here – it makes the screens clearer. Amazing – no matter how much you pay for your glasses, they never let you focus on exactly the place you want. You don’t wear them?’

  ‘Should do. I’ve got an appointment next week. So long as I don’t forget.’

  ‘Or get summoned to a meeting at the last minute. According to my mates, life’s one long meeting for you people.’

  ‘Absolutely. I’m probably missing one right now. Hang on. There! Can you see her?’ Cynd was, as Roy had predicted, scavenging. Thank goodness she was doing something as innocent as that, not trying to break into the pharmacy or ward drugs trolleys.

  ‘How do you want to play this? I can track her as long as you need. Probably,’ he added with a grin. ‘I can get some of my people to pick her up, if you like. Though I’m not sure on what grounds.’

  ‘I think it’s my job, actually, Roy. I want to talk to her about a possible manslaughter charge – but that’s between you and me. But I want to do it with the minimum of fuss.’

  ‘Come on, you don’t usually pussyfoot round killers!’

  ‘Most of my killers don’t spend a night holding the hand of a woman recovering from cancer surgery. And she’s grabbing sarnies, not drugs. Tell you what, though, keep tracking her. She may not take kindly to talking to me, after all.’ With very little reluctance, she abandoned the coffee and got to her feet. Before she could leave Roy’s den, however, another text came through. Postcards, it said.

  Which left her much wiser – or not.

  As she retraced her steps, she worked out her plan of campaign. An arrest and chase through corridors cluttered with vulnerable people and equally precious equipment was not on, especially since she was sure Cynd would soon elude her – if not the cameras. And she was in no doubt that if Roy saw a hint of a chase he’d bring his heavies in – rightly, of course. She was also sure the story would get straight back to her colleagues, to their immense amusement. So she would try a casual approach – one which would give Janie pleasure, too, with luck.

  ‘Hi, Cynd. Come to see Janie? I’m just on my way myself,’ she said, as if PACE had never come into her life. ‘Let’s go along together, shall we? I can never work out how to get anywhere in a hospital this size.’ Setting them in motion, she wittered on in a similar vein all the way to Janie’s ward. If Cynd had wanted to speak, Fran hardly gave her a chance. Still no caution, however – she’d have to work that in soon. But not until Cynd had exchanged a healing hug with Janie – assuming the poor woman was in any position to give or receive embraces.

  If Janie was surprised by their joint appearance, she didn’t show it – just beamed with delight.

  ‘Two of my favourite people!’ she crowed, grasping a hand of each. ‘I’ve been so worried about you, young Cynd, having to manage without me. I even dreamt about you last night, just as if you were safe here beside me. Give me a cuddle, lass – no, not that side, that’s the one that’s been carved about.’ Cynd’s head firmly down, she mouthed over the sobbing girl’s hair, ‘What on earth?’

  Fran mouthed back, ‘I have to arrest her. Give us your blessing, will you?’

  Janie’s eyes rolled. But Fran thought she’d do it anyway.

  At last, Fr
an eased Cynd to her feet. ‘I’d like you to come with me now, Cynd – we need to talk again about your rape and what you told Janie first time you saw her. But first I’d like us both to close our eyes and let her pray for us.’ Eye-closing wasn’t an option for Fran, of course, but she lowered them reverently and sincerely. Cynd would need all the help she could get now, from whatever direction. And so, as arresting officer, would she.

  The omens looked good. Cynd held Janie’s hand while the older women kissed as if all was normal. Pray God she wouldn’t bolt the minute she could.

  ‘OK, Janie – we have to go now,’ Fran said, still trying to sound as if they were normal visitors. She kept the social, calm tone to continue, ‘And Cyndi Lewis – you know I have to say these words because of what you said about the man you knifed – I arrest you . . .’

  Roy appeared beside her as she stood outside the curtained cubicle in A and E. ‘No drama, then!’

  ‘How did I know she’d faint on the spot? A genuine faint? And that I’d get all the medics in the Western world shoving their stethoscopes in?’

  ‘Better than her scarpering. At least you know where she is now.’

  ‘And I know I’ll have to waste valuable funds having her guarded here until they say she’s ready to be released into custody. Shit and double shit.’

  ‘Could have been worse – she could have collapsed in a cell, and think of all the forms you’d have had to fill in then.’

  It was only after Jill had turned up at A and E, not best pleased, Fran suspected, by Fran’s interference – though that would be nothing to Don Simpson’s private reaction – that Fran could leave. She took in the quickest possible visit to Janie, to assure her that Cynd had recovered consciousness and was receiving medical care. Then she could turn her attention to Lina Townend and her gnomic texts. Apparently, she’d turned up at HQ asking to speak to her, and Kim had sailed in – rightly, of course, but no less irritatingly, since Fran regarded anything to do with the cabinet as her baby. And she would have given anything to be present when Townend had eased aside the bottom of a drawer to reveal a drawer within.

  ‘Postcards. That’s all,’ Kim declared, patting a heap of individual evidence bags. ‘I told her to invoice us for her time.’

  ‘She’s gone, then? But who’ll put the cabinet back together?’

  ‘Oh, she’s already done that. Quicker than my brother can do a Rubik’s cube. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Fran lied, resisting a strong urge to kick the desk and scream. ‘OK, these cards – what do they tell us?’

  ‘Sod all. Pretty seasides, nice stately homes. Very strange mix.’

  ‘Is there one of Verities?’

  ‘That National Trust place? First place I thought of. But there isn’t. Just these.’ She picked up a pile and let them slither back on to her desk.

  Fran thought she showed great forbearance when she said quietly, ‘They just demand a bit of old-fashioned detective work, don’t they?’ But she couldn’t resist adding, like an overkeen rookie, ‘Give me a list of the places they show and I’ll see if they ring any bells with me. Actually, give them to me in order – the order they were placed in the drawer,’ she added as Kim blinked at her. ‘You have kept them in order, haven’t you?’ She took a deep breath so that she could explain without swearing or shouting. ‘You see, if someone went to this trouble to conceal them I regard anything – everything – about them as significant.’

  Everything about Kim said she hadn’t bothered. But she declared, ‘Of course. No problem. Though maybe Ms Townend could remember any particular arrangement I’ve missed.’ After a breath, which Fran could count in seconds, she continued, ‘I’ll give her a bell.’ Grabbing her phone, she headed off, shutting the door behind her so Fran couldn’t hear the ensuing conversation.

  Not unless she put her ear to the crack. She got enough to prove her suspicions horribly right. However, never one to cry over spilt milk, and taking care not to change the order herself, she leafed through them. The first thing she noticed was that not all were commercial cards, though all were much the same size.

  It looked as though Dr Lovage, assuming it was she who’d concealed the cards, had been a National Trust buff, even if they hadn’t so far been able to connect her with Verities: her travels had taken her to Felbrigg and Blickling; Lanhydrock and Cotehele; Little Moreton Hall and Erddig. So far, all very pretty and no use at all. Still nothing from Verities to connect her with Grange. Dunstanburgh – looking particularly bleak. London’s Docklands – but this was a photo, not a card. So was a view of Carcassonne. A chic place in what looked like the Cotswolds. Then there was another: a weathered gravestone.

  Sacred to the memory of Thomas Parkinson, JP

  Born 1815

  Taken to the bosom of our Lord, 1877

  And to his dearly beloved wife,

  Anna, 1820 – 1840,

  And his second wife,

  Elizabeth Jane,

  Mother of Herbert,

  both taken to a better place in 1842

  IN THEE WE TRUST

  Could they be some of Lovage’s ancestors? But she’d have had others, and there were no similar photos. She had an idea that from wherever she was currently based, Dr Lovage was having a sardonic laugh.

  Before she could summon Kim back and give her the bollocking of her young life – not on record, not the sort of rebuke that would stick with official glue throughout the rest of her career – her phone rang.

  ‘Fran? Fran Harman?’ The voice was slightly overloud, as if the speaker was a little deaf, or simply didn’t rely on his tiny mobile to carry the volume he wanted. ‘Bill Baker here.’

  ‘Bill – oh, Gardening Society Bill.’

  ‘We were hoping you’d come along to last night’s meeting, only my wife tells me you and your fiancé were tied up with the telly.’

  ‘We were indeed. I’m really sorry, Bill – the meeting went clean out of my mind. Not being a great gardener,’ she added.

  ‘Yet,’ he corrected her quickly. ‘When you’ve mastered that patch of yours you will be. Anyway, I’ve got the comments we made all signed as true, and I could drop them over to your place tonight if you like.’

  ‘I don’t like to put you to any trouble,’ she said truthfully.

  ‘No trouble. I like a bit of a walk, and to be honest I’d love a nose round.’

  ‘You’d be more than welcome. Make sure you wear heavy boots, if you’ve got any. I’ll ask them to leave a spare hard hat. Very keen on the regs, my builders,’ she added, almost apologetically.

  ‘As they should be,’ he said sharply. ‘About seven suit you?’

  It would give her a very good excuse to tear Mark from his desk – and herself, of course, from hers, or at least these photos. Meanwhile, she must have an apologetic word with Don and Jill, and see if Cynd had been released from hospital. But first, before all else, she needed a cup of tea and the loo – in whichever order.

  The latter was a good choice, because that was where she ran into Jill. ‘I’m sorry. Should have been your collar. Stuck my nose in.’

  Jill responded with a laugh. ‘Fran, the day you stop sticking your nose in, I shall consider retiring myself. Cynd will be discharged late this evening, or early tomorrow, with the proviso she’s properly fed and watered at regular intervals.’

  ‘Who’s collecting her?’

  Jill put her hands up in mock surrender. ‘OK, OK – I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘Can you go via Janie’s ward?’ She waited while Jill tapped the details into her phone. ‘She’s too ill to have to worry about anyone else’s well-being. Be sure to tell her about the feeding and watering. The poor kid won’t have to graze on others’ leavings while she’s here, at least.’

  ‘Nor in prison,’ Jill agreed soberly.

  With Mark grumbling that he’d meant to stay later and work through his personal emails in peace, but pacified by the promise of pub grub after Bill Baker’s conducted tour, they arrived
home – home! – with minutes to spare, pulling aside the inimical furls of plastic tape to improve his welcome.

  Not that Bill seemed in any way fazed by the mess. Having handed over the notes he’d promised, he peered around the site with something like a nostalgic smile. ‘I used to scrump here when I was a kid. Never got caught, thank God. Later on, when Dr Lovage took over, I did a few odd jobs. It was like painting the Forth Bridge, mind – though we can’t say that any more, now they’ve got that special long-life paint. At the start I mostly worked in the garden – heavy digging and cutting back trees.’

  ‘Not the bean patch!’ Fran said.

  ‘Oh, she let me go long before she started on her kitchen garden. She was a slight little thing, but she didn’t half muscle up – not in a bad way, mind, don’t think of her as some Russian shot-putter. Toned, that’s what she was – all because of her gardening. She’d be up and down ladders, too – like those girls working on the place now. Self-taught, she said.’

  ‘So she’d be capable of digging that trench?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. She even borrowed – and I’m sorry, it’s been clean out of my mind till I look at the place now – she even borrowed a pickaxe of mine to tackle some of the hardest ground. And a big axe so she could chop her own logs. A mighty independent woman, so it was strange she should be beholden for something like that.’

  ‘You don’t remember when?’

  Baker shook his head. ‘What I do recall is her breaking one of them. And replacing it with a brand-new one – top of the range, as you’d expect from her, for all it was one of my grandfather’s she’d broken.’ His bright eyes scanned their faces. ‘I’m digging her grave, saying this, aren’t I?’

  Mark ushered him inside. ‘I don’t think telling the truth can ever do any harm, especially when someone’s dead and gone. We’re not going to scoop her ashes from the wilds of Dartmoor and cram them back in an urn and bury it at a crossroads with a stake through the middle. But – I’m right here, aren’t I Fran? – I don’t think they’ve found a possible murder weapon yet, and it would help Fran’s team if you could remember what it was you lent and when.’